Nginx Server Block to create a virtual host

What is Nginx Virtual Host

Where is the Nginx Server Block

Server Block in Nginx is equivalent to VirtualHost in Apache HTTPD server. Using server block, you can run multiple website inside a single Nginx Installation.

How can we add multiple hosts to Nginx?

You can host multiple websites into a single machine using Nginx Server Block. For each website you need to add a separate “Server Block” in Nginx configuration serction.

How to Add a server Block

Please create a server block into this path sudo vi /etc/nginx/conf.d/sameple.com.conf

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name u.awswithatiq.com; 

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

To create a Virtual Server Block for PHP-FPM then add this code in the /etc/nginx/conf.d/sameple.com.conf file

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name www.gcptips.com;
    rewrite ^ $scheme://gcptips.com$request_uri?;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name gcptips.com;
    
    root /var/www/wordpress;
    index index.php;
    charset UTF-8;
    
    location = /favicon.ico {
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    location = /robots.txt {
        allow all;
        log_not_found off;
        access_log off;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri =404;

        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        # fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        # fastcgi_keep_conn on;
        # fastcgi_read_timeout 300;

        # fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_pass  unix:/var/run/php-fpm/www.sock;
        #for ubuntu unix:/var/run/php/php8.0-fpm.sock;

        ##
        # FastCGI cache config
        ##

        # fastcgi_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 keys_zone=WORDPRESS:10m max_size=1000m inactive=60m;
        # fastcgi_cache_key $scheme$host$request_uri$request_method;
        # fastcgi_cache_use_stale updating error timeout invalid_header http_500;        
        
        fastcgi_cache_valid any 30m;
    }
}

To enable Gzip compression please these lines under server block

# Enable Gzip
  gzip  on;
  gzip_http_version 1.0;
  gzip_comp_level 2;
  gzip_min_length 1100;
  gzip_buffers     4 8k;
  gzip_proxied any;
  gzip_types
    # text/html is always compressed by HttpGzipModule
    text/css
    text/javascript
    text/xml
    text/plain
    text/x-component
    application/javascript
    application/json
    application/xml
    application/rss+xml
    font/truetype
    font/opentype
    application/vnd.ms-fontobject
    image/svg+xml;

  gzip_static on;

  gzip_proxied        expired no-cache no-store private auth;
  gzip_disable        "MSIE [1-6]\.";
  gzip_vary           on;

Add expires by adding following lines in your code

. . .
# Default server configuration
#

# Expires map
map $sent_http_content_type $expires {
    default                    off;
    text/html                  epoch;
    text/css                   max;
    application/javascript     max;
    ~image/                    max;
}

server {
    listen 80 gcptips.com;
    listen [::]:80 gcptips.com;

    expires $expires;

For WordPress URL rewrite, please add the following lines inside server block

location / {
                             
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
        }

To check the error log, please run this command

sudo tail -30 /var/log/nginx/error.log

A detailed explanation is given here.